PED2 - Radiation protection

Project summary

PED was an existing Tracerco product with 10 years in market. It was a successful, body-worn radiation detector, noted for its robust construction and ease of use.

The PED2 project was a full-lifecycle product redevelopment and Tracerco’s first with a dedicated UX designer.

The project covered full redevelopment of the electronic device and the development of a SaaS radiation management system.

PED2 has been launched and is in its early stages of adoption as successor to PED.

Problem framing

Early in the project I ran a number of workshops with Tracerco stakeholders to identify current product issues, market gaps and ambitions. Key observations were:

  • Current support software was given away for free and and limited in use to customers

  • Ambition to provide more insight to industrial customers who monitor teams for radiation exposure

  • The product brand was heavily built on ease of use so this needed to be carried to the new product

Working with customers, distributors and Product Management, I developed and iterated upon a series of value propositions. I used these to further test ideas with customers.

Early design and scoping

Addressing the need to do more with software in the new product, I developed a design concept that provided cloud-based dose records, making use of radiation exposure data logged on PED2 devices.

I worked closely with our software team to determine feasibility and developed a number of low-fidelity wireframes to demonstrate the data collection and reporting experience we could provide.

During this time I worked closely with Product Management to develop some early licensing model ideas that would allow us to charge a recurring fee for software access, providing a new revenue stream for the product line.

Design during development

During the development phase, I was responsible for all UI design for both the electronic device and supporting software for the product.

Developing for the device UI provided a nice challenge of designing for a small screen with a single button interface.

I developed a working design guide for both firmware and software in Figma, and shared these for collaboration with two separate engineering teams.

My engineering background helped significantly in this handover and continued collaboration during the project.

Difficulty and pivots

We experienced a number of challenges during development, not least the disruption to electronics supply during Covid. This extended the engineering delivery time significantly. This was both a hinderance but also an opportunity.

The initial software design had been focussed heavily on a desktop solution with a cloud database for data storage. This was shaped by the need for rapid development. However, the complexity of this solution had become difficult for the development team to manage.

With the project delay, I took the opportunity to re-design the system towards a browser-based solution, with a lightweight desktop client for data collection. This rapid pivot allowed us to get much closer to a number of value propositions we had deferred to the product roadmap.

Outcomes

Despite a number of delivery challenges that the project has faced, we successfully shipped Tracerco’s first chargeable SaaS product. It was also the first project with a designer in the process, leading to a visually consistent product, with a number of deliberately designed experiences such as onboarding and license renewal.

At this time, the product has launched and is in its early stages of adoption. I have recently been advocating for a follow up research study, working with customers to refine the offer and address adoption issues.

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